Communing with Spirits
by Thessaly
Summary: Harriet meets another one of the family ghosts. Extended drabble.


The chateau had not been treated kindly by the war. What grass remained was spindly and overgrown, but most was brown and matted with winter mud, turned up like a graveyard or new-sown field. The smaller trees had been uprooted and carried away for firewood; the larger ones loomed, as unkempt as the vast lawn, in a protecting circle around the building itself, just visible as they walked through the gate. They approached up a long carriageway of uneven cobblestones.

A set of grand stairs led down in an elegant half-circle from the balcony doorway and retained a certain faded elegance despite their dirty stone and the encroaching ivy. No portcullis, no spikes on the towers. Harriet put her hands on her hips and examined the building. "It really wasn't used at all?" she asked.

"No." Beside her, Peter was doing some examining of his own. "Nothing useful about the location, you know. Out in bally nowhere."

"Still…How long has it been in the family?"

"I don't remember. Ages, I suppose – belongs to mother's side – or rather, no, this one isn't a Delagardie at all; it's a Crawford house, and they've been in the Loire valley forever. 13th century, at least, not that you can tell to look at it. It was renovated every twenty years or so, when the new seigneur got married, presumably."

"But abandoned." Harriet shook her head. "What a wonderful setting for a novel."

"_Death among the Ruins_?"

"I imagine I'm not the first to want that title – but maybe I can think up one almost as good." She smiled at him. "Can we go in?"

"I hope so." Peter lead the way up the staircase and gave the door a shove. It opened in a cloud of dust and they both stepped, coughing, into the ruins of Sevigny.

After half an hour of wandering over tiled floors and peering up at ceilings vaulted into eternity, Harriet came to the conclusion that the chateau was not in fact the ideal setting for a detective story. It was too quiet, with the stillness preserving a sense of pre-war antiquity as the dust preserved the furniture. Sevigny seemed to be sleeping that afternoon, curled on itself like a drowsy hedgehog in the green and gold heat. She would have thought that after Talboys she would have had enough of old buildings, but something about the chateau drew her through the archaic rooms and faded furniture. It was odd, that: nothing was broken here but simply preserved, drying out in a forgotten corner of the river valley, a foster child of silence and slow time.

It was a place of peace; that Harriet noticed after the first half hour. After the second, as she wandered through rooms and up back stairs by herself (Peter had abandoned her to poke through the drain system), she realized that it was also a place of great beauty; the Delagardies, or Crawfords, or whatever they were called, had clearly been people of taste. She supposed the best of the collection had gone when the place was abandoned, but what remained was exquisite, in glimpses of bright colours, fine detail work, long elegant lines all just visible under the dust. She skirted an enormous carved chair, a medieval gothic monstrosity someone had positioned in a dark corner of the library like a throne, and stared nostalgically at the empty, dusty shelves. There was something that looked suspiciously like a mummy in another corner, and a small Turkish prayer rug that, when she shook all the dust off, revealed itself to be made of shimmering reds and blues. "The spoils of five cultures," she murmured, running her fingers across a marquetry side table.

The library opened out onto a large hall with wide windows facing out on the grounds. One had broken and a great swath of the pale gold drapes lay pooled on the floor in a uselessly gallant gesture. Harriet passed through the space as though it were a church, trying to dull the click of her heels in the silence that was even heavier and more silent than elsewhere in the house.

She was aware of something tantalizingly similar to the library at Duke's Denver, and as she noticed the similarity, she heard a rustle ahead that made her jump. She immediately damned herself for a fool – it was probably an animal, or at worst, a trespasser; a collaborationist or run-away, perhaps. She continued towards the sound, since it was the direction she was walking anyway. She became slowly aware of the sound of distant music; someone several rooms away was playing Palestrina on a harpsichord. Had Peter finished with the drains? It would be like him to find the harpsichord – although it was a mercy it had survived the occupation intact.

She followed the interlocking counterpoint through several hallways and up an attenuated flight of stairs before she found the musician. Peering around the half-open door, she thought for a moment that it was Peter, but was even more surprised to realize that it was not. The hair was true gold and too dark; the long-fingered, elegant hands scampering across the black keys were familiar, but the owner had a most un-Peter-like fondness for rings, and the trim cut of cloth across the narrow shoulders was, while beautiful, certainly something Bunter had never overseen. There was also someone else in the room, a young woman with long brown hair, leaning one hand on the harpsichord and watching the player with a thoughtful smile. It was all Harriet had time to notice before the woman looked up.

She signaled to her companion, who stopped playing. Harriet began to garble something about how very sorry she was to intrude and then the musician turned around. She was certain, on seeing his face, both that he was _not_ Peter but that he was very like. There was some resemblance she couldn't quite place, just as she couldn't place the familiar friendly grin of the young woman. He raised one eyebrow questioningly. "A visitor?" he said, though whether he spoke to her or his companion she couldn't tell.

"Of a sort – I – I'm married to Peter. Gerald's younger brother. We thought we'd see how the place had survived the war. I'm sorry to intrude."

"Married to Peter?" One idle hand played a figure on the keyboard behind him. "And verily, she has founded herself upon a rock and sits at the gates of Heaven…" The trill resolved into a muted chord. "And Peter is Gerald's younger brother. These are – Paul's children?"

"Nephew," said the woman in grey. "Paul didn't marry."

"Ah yes – or rather, ah, no. He most certainly did not." A look of sneaking amusement flitted across the man's face. "Sewing oats well into October and through much of the winter. And has he converted yet, our son of Tarsus?"

"No," said Harriet, supposing this to be directed at her. Whoever he was, he was certainly related to Peter.

"I suspected not." The man at the harpsichord looked at Harriet for a thoughtful moment and she watched him in return, warily. There was something both intimidating and disarming in those improbable, cornflower eyes. "Do you like the house?" he asked eventually.

"Yes, very much . It's lovely."

"Good." He smiled, faintly. "The craft of mannes hand so curiously arrayed hadde this gardin treweley…even when it is falling to pieces, it is beautiful. It was meant to be so." He caught Harriet's eyes for a moment with his limpid blue stare and nodded. "Have a care of Sevigny, Peter's wife. It was once a place of great safety."

"And love," said the girl standing at the piano.

The musician looked up at her. "And love," he agreed.

Harriet heard a familiar step in the hall and turned involuntarily. She heard Peter say, "Domina? Where are you, domina?"

"In here."

"Ah. Communing with the sprits?" Peter put his head around the door. "I say," he added, "is that a harpsichord?"

"Yes," said Harriet to both questions.

**A/N **_I will fight out to the end that Lord Peter is related to Francis Crawford. I refer you to Dorothy Sayers and Dorothy Dunnett respectively for Lord Peter and the blue-eyed man at the harpsichord. If you like one, you'll probably like the other._


End file.
